Orn's Travel Blog

It was with great regret that we left The Island View Cabana at Ao Mae Haad. Not only were we saying good-bye to a great beach town and a great resort with very entertaining Burmese waiters, we were leaving the wonderful Ko Phangan and saying good-bye to our Canadian friends, Isabelle and Kyle. We hope though that we will see them again in a couple of days in Krabi, before they head down to Malaysia.

With Isabelle and Kyle from Canada

We on the other hand took the ferry to Ko Samui, the biggest island of the three we have visited and most westernized. On Ko Samui you will find an international airport, McDonald’s and Pizza Hut and a lot of fancy resorts for package travelers. It had worked so well for us on Ko Phangan to go against the stream that we headed away from the main beaches on the east coast and took a taxi towards the west coast. This time we weren’t as lucky as before and didn’t find the town we ended in too exciting. We therefore took another taxi to the east coast and ended in the town where the main port is located.

...we're on the road again...

Yesterday we managed to try three of the five types of taxis that we have seen here in Thailand. First we took the “regular” taxi to the port in Ko Phangan. The regular taxi is a pickup truck where the passengers go in the back with the luggage. If you are lucky there are benches on both sides and some sort of a roof, other times it is just the naked back side of the pickup (what ever that is called :). From the port in Ko Samui we got a party van with a huge stereo, disco lights and an mp3 player and to the port town we got a motor taxi, which is just a scooter and a driver (we needed two sets ;). The driver managed to put the bag between his legs and we jumped on in the back. The other two types that we haven’t tried yet are the normal yellow taxi and a tuk tuk, which is a motorbike with three wheels and has a bench for two in the back.

The night market

Last night we went to the food market down by the peer. The market consists of maybe 40 booths, each selling its own specialty. To name a few of the dishes the booths were offering they had:

• Fried chicken either whole with the head and everything or single pieces (definitely something for you Deepak and Bob)
• Grilled chicken and duck on a spear with the hearts, liver or feet available on a spear as well
• Fried noodles with pork, chicken, beef, shrimp, crab or fish
• Grilled squid or white fish of all sorts
• Sausages or hot dogs made of pork, chicken or tofu
• Some kind of meat balls made all sorts of ingredients
• All kinds of different curries with rice or noodles (red, green, masman, etc.)
• Dumplings with curry, fish or meets
• All sorts of juices and shakes
• Crepes with bananas or chocolate
• Jelly and cakes and rice boiled in syrup and sesame essence

Fried chicken

Different types of curries

Jelly and other desserts

...and our favorite - Coconu custard

…and a lot of other stuff that we didn’t really recognize. We finally settled on a box of fried chicken, a couple of spears of grilled chicken and meat balls and for desert we had the rice boiled in syrup and sesame and some sort of fried coconut pudding. Everything except the meat balls was absolutely fantastic and ended up costing us 120 baht with water or less than $4 all in all. We are planning to go again before we leave and hopefully we will be even more adventurous.

Everything except the meatballs was very nice :)

You need some rest when you are full :)

ps. can someone update me on the Tiger Woods story ???  Are they back togeather?  Is he dating someone else?  Did she break is jaw with the 9-iron? Is she dating Björn from Abba? Is he a ladyboy (well he is half Thai)?